Lady and the Law

Susan Pamerleau may be the most surprising
sheriff Bexar County has ever had. How she
plans to use her formidable résumé—and her
wrenching past—to make San Antonio safer.

By Lynn Freehill

JoJo Marion

Bexar County’s new sheriff strides into the lobby of an Austin Holiday Inn. It’s full of men. They’re in cowboy hats. She’s in a business suit. Susan Pamerleau has an atypical profile, and she wears it proudly. She has a military officer’s straight-backed posture, a politician’s extended arm and a corporate executive’s confidence. In the 66 years before becoming sheriff, she’s been all three.

There is no trace today of the role that could have cut those years short: abused woman. In the 1970s, Pamerleau was rising from Air Force lieutenant to captain, commanding more and more personnel. But while things were going well at work, Pamerleau says, they were collapsing at home. Her husband of seven years, Ben, was harming her verbally, emotionally and sometimes physically. He threatened to kill her if she ever left him. He kept a loaded .38-caliber pistol by their bed to prove it.

The day Pamerleau left him, she followed an exit plan she’d put together in the few days before. She divided their joint bank account, packed her clothes, wrote a note and took away the pistol’s ammunition. When he came home to the note, Ben purchased more ammunition and reloaded the gun. He spoke with Pamerleau on the phone later that night and threatened suicide. “Do you want to hear me do it?” he asked. She hung up quietly. He shot himself in the head.

That was in 1978. As tragic as it was, Pamerleau says the loss freed her. “I don’t have to look over my shoulder,” she says. “Had he lived, he would have followed me the rest of my life.”

Pamerleau says her traumatic past and her new role as Bexar County sheriff are tied. She feels called to use her life experience to help reduce domestic violence and work toward crime prevention. “I thank God every day I’m alive,” she says. “Because of that experience, I feel I have a responsibility to help others.”

Freed from abuse, Pamerleau grew as a leader. She rose to major general, commanding the Air Force Personnel Center at the Pentagon. Retiring from the military after 32 years, she returned to San Antonio, a city she had loved being stationed in for its diversity and Southwestern flavor. She was quickly snapped up by USAA as senior vice president for military affairs.

Then, with no law-enforcement experience, Pamerleau ran for Bexar County sheriff last fall. On Nov. 6, she became the first woman elected to the office. (In 1928, Matilda Stevens was appointed to the position after her husband, James, died in office.) That put her squarely in front of 1,700 deputies, detention officers and civilian employees as well as a budget of about $105 million—one-third of Bexar County’s entire spending.

By December, her new position had her going through weapons qualifications, which she passed easily, and attending training for new sheriffs from around Texas. They came from the state’s 254 counties to a Holiday Inn in Austin, many so folksy that a hired entertainer impersonating Barney Fife from The Andy Griffith Show fit right in. Pamerleau started mingling immediately, meeting her fellow urban sheriffs and rural counterparts alike.

Former colleagues like Eric Benken, who worked with Pamerleau both in the Air Force and at USAA, had been surprised to see “Susan for Sheriff” signs around town last fall. “I never thought of that,” Benken says. “But she’s motivated to serve. I believe that. And she saw this as a huge challenge.”

Others, such as Cyndi Taylor Krier, at first pushed back against the run. A former Texas legislator and judge, Krier was a fellow executive at USAA and became a friend. With her political background, Krier had advised Pamerleau when she lost narrowly for county commissioner in 2010.

When Jim Lunz, the political patron who years ago spotted now-Sen. John Cornyn, told Pamerleau she should consider campaigning for sheriff this time, her first reaction was, “Yeah, right.” Then she took another look. Running a mega-jail and planning for massive population growth around one of America’s largest cities, she concluded, took the skills of a CEO. She had those, and she was intrigued.

This time, though, Krier played devil’s advocate. “I saw my role as making sure she went into it with her eyes wide open—that she saw the potential pitfalls and challenges and the difficulties that have been around for many, many sheriffs over many, many years,” Krier says. “She didn’t blink.”

Instead, the former executive would say, “Have they tried this?” or “I’m sure reasonable people could come to an agreement on that.” She sustained that approach in the run-up to her stroke-of-midnight New Year’s swearing-in, listening to briefings on what had been done in the past while identifying new staff members and potential new approaches.

As sheriff-elect, Pamerleau hadn’t revealed all of her specific plans by presstime. But her main priority is public safety, which includes, among other things, addressing the need for updated training for deputies and establishing fuller responses to family violence calls. Involving a “helping agency” to which deputies can refer domestic abuse victims would be a huge gain, she says—in fact, she believes a helping agency could have allowed her to get help sooner in her marriage.

Although her experience with family violence deepened her understanding of how to help other victims, Pamerleau says that is just one aspect of what qualifies her to be a strong sheriff. Likewise, she doesn’t want to be defined solely as the first woman elected to the position. She blazed those kinds of trails in the Air Force and believes society should move beyond that now. “It’s noteworthy for Bexar County,” she says. “It’s not noteworthy for me.”

When she’s not enforcing the law, Pamerleau enjoys living downtown, with all the music and activity that brings. She works out with a trainer several times each week and takes quick walks to favorite spots like La Tuna Grill, Liberty Bar and Biga on the Banks.

And then the CSI, Law & Order and Criminal Minds junkie winds down with her favorite crime and justice shows. It’s not disturbing, she says: “Law and order always prevail.”

This article appears in the February 2013 issue of San Antonio Magazine